Shoes for Africa

Courtesy of Lisa LovettChildren get the first look at their faces when missionaries from St. Luke's in Beaufort show them photos taken during the visit to Kibindu in Tanzania.

Courtesy of Lisa LovettTwo Masai warriors move their cattle to new grazing ground.

Courtesy Coco JozicThese are shoes the parishioners at Church of the Cross contributed to the Princess Warriors' global mission charity Shoes for Africa.

Courtesy of Lisa LovettVillagers watch St. Luke's mission people as they travel to Kibindu in Tanzania.

Courtesy of Lisa LovettLisa Lovett smiles with two Muslim girls at the MEA Foundation, an orphanage in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania St. Luke's supports.

Courtesy of Lisa Lovettmore than 700 students attend St. Augustine's in Dar-es-Salaam, a private school supported by the mission work of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Beaufort.

There are more than 86,472 kilometers of roads in Tanzania. That's the equivalent of about 53,731 miles or across the United States nearly 18 times. Of the main roads managed by the Ministry of Works — somewhere in the neighborhood of nearly 17,000 miles — 16,830 of them are unpaved.

For Bluffton resident Lisa Lovett, the unpaved roads scattered with litter worried her when she saw so many little unshod feet while working on a mission trip for St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Beaufort. Thinking about it inspired her to organize a shoe collection.

"What prompted me to start Shoes for Africa is a lot of the children would walk in to where we were working wearing shoes half the size of their feet, like three, four, five sizes too-small shoes — if they had any at all," Lovett said after she returned home. "I think because they do so much walking and rarely do you see a road that is paved, let alone there is so much trash all over. It’s very dangerous to see these babies walking in the street with no shoes on. It’s something that they’re used to but it broke my heart."

Going to Africa on a mission trip has long been a desire for Lovett and missing the chance on an earlier opportunity was disappointing. The stay-at-home mom lives in Westbury Park, attends the Buckwalter campus of Church of the Cross and is a member of the Princess Warriors, a local Christian women's group that gathers in retreat regularly and takes on various charitable efforts near and far. When the chance came for the trip to Tanzania, Lovett jumped on it.

"It was an act of God. Martin Taylor, our missions leader, knew I wanted to go to Africa," she said. "He knew of this mission trip with St. Luke’s happening in July and doors started opening for me. I just took a deep breath and went. I thought to myself that 16 days in Bluffton will pass just like they will in Africa and I would rather be doing something for the Lord in Africa, so I went."

Lovett admitted she likes doing scary things and taking on the trip to work in a clinic, with orphans and working in the secondary school was a huge undertaking.

"Maybe not being scary but being bold and stepping out in faith. Tanzania is more than 50 percent Muslim now and I saw it as a bigger challenge. Sometimes when we are called we don’t know why we are called. I never felt called to Detroit or to Belize. I felt called to Africa," Lovett said.

The mission team left July 6 and arrived July 7 in Dar es Salaam, once the country's capital but still the center of government. The first day Lovett worked in the clinic weighing babies, chatting with the women when they were getting their blood drawn and being tested for AIDS. She also worked in the pharmacy dispensing pharmaceuticals.

What struck her about the clinic was "how archaic it was. There were just a few medications for everything, hand-made instruments, open air. I think the thing that struck me the most was there was a lady that got real sick and they took her over to the bed area. The 'nurse' went to give her the shot medication for malaria and the medicine was in the syringe. She went to crack the syringe in the keyhole of the door. There was no other way to open up the medication and she left some of the medicine and part of the syringe in the keyhole."

Her experience at the orphanage further stirred her desire to do more.

"The orphanage was very sad. There were 60 orphans that came and we delivered shoes, clothes, lots of books, a few toys and they just sat, waited for their turn," Lovett said. "There was soda there and that was a big enticement for the kids — it’s almost like a delicacy there. They just loved it."

Upon her return she began working toward collecting shoes and has been looking for new or nearly new shoes.

"It prompted me more from a safety issue than a comfort issue. When we did bring the shoes it was a free-for all," she said. "What happened was we brought a lot of smaller shoes and the older kids didn’t get any, and that was the idea I left the orphanage with."

SHOES FOR AFRICA

Email Lisa Lovett at lisapulice@yahoo.com and she will work with donors to collect shoes or donations for shipping costs. Those attending the Princess Warriors retreat from 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Sept. 17 At the Church of the Cross school worship center at the Buckwalter Parkway campus are encouraged to bring shoes.